Read Me a Story
Nonprofit I Would Rather Be Reading Partners With Churchill Downs to Bring Children to the Backside to Read to Horses
Written by Laura Ross
They do get a sparkle in their eye. Most of the kids really enjoy it and they leave in a better place than when they came in.”
Churchill Downs horse trainer Michelle Lovell knows a thing or two about the four-legged “kids” she trains daily to win on the track. In fact, it’s hard to know whether the sparkle she’s talking about is in the eyes of the visiting children or the horses. Actually, it’s probably both.
Her horses are the beneficiaries of a unique partnership between the Louisville, Kentucky-based nonprofit, I Would Rather Be Reading and Churchill Downs Racetrack.
Two area schoolteachers, Ashley Dearinger and Allison Ogle, were teaching at Jacob Elementary School, which sits in the shadows of the Twin Spires, when they discovered a mutual love of teaching first graders how to read. Once they mastered the basics, the teachers hoped to bolster the children’s love of reading. They pulled them into small groups and realized the students had more than books on their minds.
“When kids are in a small group, they feel comfy and safe with you, and they will tell you everything,” Ogle said. “They’ll really open up about their lives and what’s going on. Many of my kids had really heavy stuff that they were going through, from watching their parents struggle with finances, worrying about putting food on the table and even in some cases, some really hard abuse and neglect. I Would Rather Be Reading came from wanting to marry two things – high quality interventions and making reading equitable for every kid. Then also providing impactful social emotional learning lessons so that they could develop healthy coping strategies and learn what healthy relationship building and conflict resolution looks like.”
The pair launched their nonprofit in 2018 with nine children in their first summer camp. Today, I Would Rather Be Reading offers year-round opportunities with after-school programming for more than three-hundred children, packed summer camps as well as other educational applications. The after-school program is free for all students in kindergarten through fifth grade. It is offered in partnership with nine Jefferson County Public Schools and at Metro Parks and Recreation centers in Louisville.
Programs provide students with research-based literacy instruction and intervention, intentional social-emotional learning (SEL) activities, and daily enrichment focused on physical and mental health, life skills and the arts because many of the children in the program have experienced abuse, violence or other forms of trauma. The literacy-based activities and enrichment help ease some of their emotional issues and increases their academic performance.
Dearinger and Ogle looked to their neighbor, Churchill Downs, to bring together a special partnership. “Many of our families live in the neighborhood there, but have never been inside Churchill Downs’ gates,” said Ogle. “They invited our children in to see the horses and tour the backside, so reading to the horses came naturally. There are so many studies that show how therapeutic reading is for kids, and the Churchill Downs team added that it’s therapeutic for the horses as well.”
Bringing the children to the horse barns to read is an eagerly anticipated field trip. “The children get dressed up and wear fascinators or hats so they can be a part of the Derby tradition,” explained Ogle. “They choose books they feel confident reading and they’ll each sit with the horse and read to it, while the other children visit other horses. It’s a very special one-on-one moment with just the trainer, the horse and the student. You can really see them light up as they’re reading and the horse will interact with them.”
Churchill Downs is a proud partner with I Would Rather Be Reading and sees it as a program that invests in the youth of the community. “Kids are able to have an experience that they would not normally be able to, while still learning and practicing their reading skills,” said Mark Whitten, Director of Community Relations for Churchill Downs Incorporated. “Seeing the connection between the kids and the horses is so special. One of the most exciting parts of the program is seeing a kid who is scared of horses at the beginning, bonding with the horse and becoming friends with it by the time they’re done reading. It’s truly incredible to see.”
It’s personal for trainer Michelle Lovell. As a jockey, she won 137 races before she transitioned to training in 2003 following an injury. She’s around horses every day and knows their sweet and sometimes cantankerous natures, but something special happens when the children read to the horses in the barn.
“We set up a hay bale or a chair in front of my horses, who do love people,” she explained. “They read a few pages and take turns. They are really intimidated when they first come in the barn. They’ve never been around horses, and it takes them a few minutes to warm up and get one brave kid to sit down and start reading.”
But when they do, magic happens. The horses are engaged and seem to truly listen. They bob their heads and look for caresses from their new little friends. “It’s like the kids just come out of their shells and then they want to pet the horses and feed them peppermints,” Lovell laughed. “And a couple of them even say, when I grow up, I want to come and work for you. It’s such a great little thing to watch the kids just blossom in the hour that they spend in the barn. They come in shy and then leave loving the horses.”
“It definitely builds a core memory,” added Ogle. “It’s such a special opportunity and some of these kids would never have the chance to visit Churchill Downs, but here they are, right there with the horses. It just instills confidence and builds their self-esteem in wonderful ways.”
It’s a real-life positive experience bolster to the Mindful Literacy curriculum written by the I Would Rather Be Reading staff that addresses teaching social emotional learning in a systematic way. It’s based off the organization CASTLE, (Collaborative for Academic and Social Emotional Learning) that has done a lot of policy work around what competencies kids need to make sure it is present in after-school programming as well as in-school to become a healthy, functional adult. Those skills are self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making relationship skills and social awareness.
“We had one little girl from our after-school program who was pretty dysregulated one day,” Ogle said. “She got to Churchill Downs, and she sat down with the horse, and there was just this sense of peace that came over her. She started reading, and suddenly, she could sit still, she was focusing and doing the things that she needed to do. I remember thinking, this is such a strong coping skill that we’re teaching our kids. Reading is such a healthy coping skill, but for a lot of our kids who don’t feel successful at it, they don’t have access to that. Reading to the horses is making the act of reading equitable for kids.”
The main takeaway for Ogle and Dearinger is that personal connection they make with these children who might have rough starts in life. They hope their efforts build something meaningful and long-lasting for their students.
“Some days, I still can’t believe it,” Ogle said. “I am so thankful that we get to do the work that we do, because there’s a lot of kids in our city that need it. I know that our program wouldn’t have grown without partnerships because we can’t do it all. We can teach reading, and we can teach the other skills, but a big part of our program is enrichment and making sure that kids understand what’s out there for them. They can see the possibility in a hobby, an interest or even a career path. It takes all our community partners like Churchill Downs to help expose these kids to their futures. We are grateful.”
To learn more about I Would Rather Be Reading, visit their website for upcoming programs, events and ways to give at www.iwouldratherbereading.org.
Read More: https://www.churchilldownsincorporated.com/flipbook/2024_Fall/#page=75
